“No,” Margaret whispered, not to anyone in particular. “Don’t give up, Sophie.”

She rested her palm lightly against the girl’s sternum. The skin was cool, the kind of cool that makes memory rush in: the first morning Sophie arrived with a smile and an unfinished drawing—blue sky, yellow dog, a stick‑figure family under an Ohio maple. “When I get better,” Sophie had said, “I’m going to paint the whole sky.”

Tonight the sky felt gray.

Three minutes. That was the space left on the edge of the cliff. Three minutes for a small heart to stop beating. In three minutes, even hope could disappear.

The facts were stark, the charts merciless. For seven months, an autoimmune storm had swept through Sophie Carter’s body. Treatment after treatment had met a wall. There were cautious trials under close supervision. There were nights when numbers ticked the right way and mornings when they fell like leaves.